Blackburnian Warbler

May 16 2016, RBG Arboretum, Hamilton ON Counting birds today on the back edge of a three-week system of grey, wet and cold was to be offered many candidate Birds of the Day (summer weather is supposed to start this afternoon). I teamed up with a companion who was scheduled to complete the daily transect and it didn’t take long to fill a page or two of our field books.

First B.o.t.D candidate, entered on line six of my book, was a Brown Thrasher seen and heard singing boldly from a treetop. Funny how they hold a hunch-backed posture when they sing, it’s as if they have a bit too much body and not quite enough neck.

We were never out of earshot of Baltimore Orioles announcing their arrival and intention to control the world. We could hear but almost never see many Pine Warblers, Red-eyed Vireos, Blue Jays, Yellow Warblers, Ovenbirds, House Wrens and Ruby-crowned Kinglets.

Second B.o.t.D candidate was a male Rose-breasted Grosbeak who dared to take food from my companion’s outstretched hand. In a way you could hardly blame him, she was offering whole cashews, almonds, peanuts, dried cranberries and apricot chunks! A female grosbeak watched longingly from a wing-flap away, she was sorely tempted but somehow couldn’t quite make the leap of faith.

With a bit of ear-stretching we could make out a far-off Scarlet Tanager in song, it seemed to be getting closer and in time we were treated to a few sightings: two scorching-red males and a couple of demure olive-green females. There must have been a pulse of tanagers passing through because we continued hearing the melodious, ‘sounds-like-a-robin-with-a-sore’ throat song on and off all morning.

It had started to rain lightly, I was getting chilled and my enthusiasm was threatened. My companion was in good form though and she has a good ear for bird song, she could hear the high-flying ‘zee,ee,ee,ee,eeZIP’ crescendo buzz of a Northern Parula and together we struggled to make sense of the silhouettes of several flitting warblers high in the forest canopy. Against a flat grey sky it’s really tough to make out features and we were missing far too many. The old expression, ‘A bad workman always blames his tools’ nags at me in times like this. Is the ambient light a tool?

Anyway, after a while we were sure that we were watching Bay-breasted and Chestnut-sided Warblers, Northern Parulas and quite probably Tennessee Warblers too. A Bay-breasted Warbler would make a good Bird of the Day but I was hardly exultant at my laboured sightings.

Our day’s list grew filling pages in our field books with Great-crested Flycatchers, Field Sparrows, Indigo Buntings and much, much more (59 species in fact). The day was capped off with a brief but dramatic face-to-face encounter with a couple of Blackburnian Warblers. Thinking back to my musings a couple of postings ago on suitable adjectives for warblers, I think Blackburnian Warblers alone earn the term fiery, nothing in warbler world has quite the punch of a testosterone-loaded male as the Blackburnian. It was my Bird of the day, pushing aside Brown Thrasher, Rose-breasted Grosbeak, Scarlet Tanager, and Bay-breasted Warbler – tough competition.